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AOL-Time/Warner's PVR to Skip Ad-Skipping
btempleton writes "Echoing recent comments that PVR users are thieves a story from CNET announces that AOL's set-top box plans may not allow skipping ads. Broadcasters continue to be afraid of the PVR, admitedly with good reason for their current business model. As I point out in my essay on the future of TV, PVRs and Advertising, TV ads are a terrible bargain for the user, paying us about $1.20 per hour of our attention, and something has to change. It's worth noting that they say they like the Tivo over the Replay because the Tivo does not have 30 second skip, but in fact it does."
If you live in an area served by Time Warner AOL cable, they will give you the choice-limiting box as part of the service. For analog service, you can simply bypass the box and use your cable-ready TV. But for digital cable and premium channels, you'll have to use their box.
Don't expect to buy some unencumbered replacement box from another source either. Most of these boxes are made just for the cable industry. Yes there are gray-market sources, so you can get a box that lets you watch HBO for free. That constitutes theft of service under 47 U.S.C section 553. They could use the same argument for these new boxes.
Fast forward buttons don't care how long a commercial break is, and if the device has something like TiVo's skipback adjustment it works very well indeed.
Additionally there are certain markers that surround advertising blocks - fade in/outs are the cheap and easy way to look for them, but a gain meter on the sound level is better. And circumventing these things is considerably harder - especially the second one.
Banner ads are the least avoidable of all of this... without some custom filtering on each show you'll have to live with them. And I've already seen one network (don't recall if it's Fox or CBS) start to use them during programming. And badly - they rescale the main show to a new aspect ratio for 15-20s while running the banner ad. Makes everyone look short and fat. Freaking annoying.
I think the problem is that we've got two different notions of skipping ads here. The first is to fast-forward through advertisements. Even though the ads are being played without sound and the majority of frames are being dropped, they're still briefly popping up on the screen with a chance to grab your attention (especially since you're actively watching the screen to know when to hit play). This is the ad skipping method used by Tivo owners who haven't enabled the 30 second skip backdoor.
The other ad skipping method is to really skip over the ads using a 30 second skip button or even automatic commercial detection/elimination. The user just whacks the skip button until the TV show is back on screen (or does nothing in the case of the automated process). Under this situation, even the most well-written ad has no chance at grabbing your attention. The 30 second skip button is the method used by ReplayTV owners.
Now it's my guess (based on what little the article says and a little common sense) that they're using the notion of ad skipping to refer to the second skip method. I don't believe that they're disabling the fast-forward button every time a commercial break shows up.
Based on your comment that you don't see why anyone would buy this at all, I suspect you interpreted the article to mean that they were prohibiting the first type of ad skipping. I think that isn't the case here.